Full text of "Printed textiles 1760-1860 in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum"

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PRINTED
TEXTILES

in the Collection of
the Cooper-Hewitt
Museum

The Smithsonian

nstitution's National
Museum of Design

PRINTED
TEXTILES

1306

U <o N H 2.

in the Collection of
the Cooper-Hewitt
Museum

The Smithsonian
Institution's National
Museum of Design

COVER

Roller-printed tabric
England, c. 1830
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 34.3 cm.
Gift of Harold M. Bailey
1960-79-32

INSIDE COVER

Block-printed fabric

Produced by Christophe-

Philippe Oberkampf

(1738-1815)

Jouy, France, late 18th

century

Plain-weave cotton

Height of repeat: 22.8 cm.

Gift of Josephine Howell

1973-51-134

BACKC0\ER

Salesman's card

France, early 19th century

Plain-weave cottons

on paper

71.8x49.5 cm.

Museum purchase

1986-19-1

Institution

Library of Congress Catalog

No. 87-072447

ISBN 0-910503-57-5

This handbook, funded in
part by Brunschwig & Fils,
Inc., was published on the
occasion of the exhibition
Color by the Yard: Printed
Fabric 1760-1860. which has
been supported by Laura
Ashley, Inc., J.P. Stevens &
Co., Inc., and the New York
State Council on the Arts.

Photographs by Scott Hyde

Design by Mentyka/Schlott

Typography by

Fine Composition, Inc.

Printing by

Water Street Press, Ltd.

Note: All dimensions are in
centimeters, with height
preceding width.

FIGURE 1

Block for printing
one corner of
a handkerchief
Europe, early 19th century
Wood, metal, and felt
Gift of Eleanor and
Sarah Hewitt
1931-71-24B

This block would have been
turned four times to print
the four corners of a hand-
kerchief.

FOREWORD

A seems fitting that this publication
on printed textiles, and its accom-
panying exhibition, Color by the Yard:
Printed Fabric 1760-1860. should mark
the closing of the Museum's tenth
anniversary year. A major portion of
the Cooper-Hewitt's inaugural exhibi-
tion as the Smithsonian's National
Museum of Design was devoted to
cloth and its transformation into a
myriad of designs. That exhibition
clearly established the importance
of textiles in human history. The
Museum's collection of textiles is one
of the finest in the world. It contains
over thirty thousand examples from
many geographic areas, spanning a
period of more than two thousand
years. The collection reflects an end-
less variety of patterns, including all

types of fabt ics and methods of man-
ufacture, and it serves as a valuable
resource for designers and scholars.
The collection has grown over the
years through the generosity of many
friends. J. P. Morgan was a major
contributor, as were Richard Cranch
Greenleaf, Marian Hague, and
Josephine Howell. The Textile
Department is most indebted, how-
ever, to the founders themselves.
Eleanor and Amy Hewitt had a par-
ticular fondness for textiles and began
collecting as young girls. Color by the
Yard was made possible by support
from the New York State Council on
the Arts, Brunschwig & Fils, Inc.,
Laura Ashley, Inc., and J. P. Stevens &
Co., Inc., to whom we are deeply
indebted.

Lisa Taylor
Director Emeritus

INTRODUCTION

The use of carved blocks, metal
stamps or seals, and colored pigments
and resists to imprint motifs on cloth
reaches back into early history. Today,
however, the term printed textiles is
generally applied only to those lengths
of fabric on which an image has been
printed in repeat with colorfast dyes,
resists, or discharges by means of
wooden blocks, engraved plates, or
cylinders to create a washable, pat-
terned textile. These practices became
a part of the European textile industry
during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

Prior to the seventeenth century,
Europeans printed on fabric using
oil-based pigments or inks to produce
cheaper and cruder versions of woven
fabrics. It wasn't until the French,
Dutch, and English East Indian trad-
ing companies brought back painted
cloths from India that Europeans
became enthusiastic about printed
cottons. Indian painted cloths were
lightweight and colorful, and the
demand for these exotic imports grew
rapidly. The Dutch, who were among
the first to organize systematic trade
with India, were also among the first
Europeans to develop textile printing
centers. By the seventeenth century,
textile printing was practiced in
several areas of Europe with varying
degrees of success (FIGURE 1).

Unfortunately, very little informa-

tion is available about the early
European printing firms. In France
and England, where industrial centers
for pattern-woven fabric were already
well established, silk and wool manu-
facturers feared competition from
printed textiles and agitated success-
fully for laws to suppress or curb the
new industry. These laws and statutes,
long since repealed, became a matter
of public record and still exist in
municipal archives where they can be
consulted by historians. Ironically, in
Switzerland, the Netherlands, and
various German states where there
was no suppression, history has
proven more elusive.

A certain amount of confusion has
been introduced into the efforts of
modern researchers by the terminol-
ogy employed to describe textiles
during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. French records, for example,
use the words toile peinte and indienne
to refer both to imported, painted
Indian cloth and to domestically
produced, printed textiles. Similar
confusion exists in English records
in which painted cloth imported
from India and domestically printed
cottons may both be called chintz
or calico.

Cotton cloth was used for the
painted fabrics that had initiated the
fashion for printed cloth, and
it became the fabric of choice for

Block-printed fabric (detail

on left)

Produced by the firm of

Christophe-Pliilippe

Oberkampt

Jouy, France, 1770-80

Plain-weave with linen warp,

cotton weft

Height of repeat: 26.5 cm.

Gift of Josephine Howell

1973-51-101

The horizontal "seam," or
white space, above the large
flower in the detail indicates
the edge of the printing
block; several overprinted
registration marks are
visible as well.

FIGURE j

Block-printed fabric
England, c. 1780
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 84.5 cm.
Purchased in memory of
Mrs. John Innes Kane
1953-19-3

European textile printers as well.
Since cotton couldn't be grown in
quantity in a northern climate,
printers had to import undyed cotton
cloth from India and various
Mediterranean countries. Not until
well into the second half of the
eighteenth century did Europeans
develop the ability to spin cotton fiber
into a thread strong enough to serve
as the warp in an all-cotton fabric.
Prior to that, European printers
sometimes used a cloth woven in
Europe with a linen warp and a
cotton weft, linen being grown in
Europe and readily available. These
linen-cotton fabrics were known as
fustians in England and siamoises in
France, although both of these terms
were also used for other fabrics.
Fabrics of mixed fibers were not as
satisfactory for dyeing as all-cotton
Indian cloth, however, because of the
thickness of the fibers and because
the linen and cotton threads did not
take the dye equally.

Any discussion of textile printing
techniques must begin with dyes and
their technology, for it is the dye that
gives the fabric its color. Most early
dyes were derived from plants,
although some of the more brilliant
colors were produced by insects
and shellfish. We know from rare
examples of unused fabric from the
eighteenth century that many colors

were strong and bright, and not at all
the muted shades now seen on faded
and worn fabrics from the period.
Dye chemists worked throughout the
eighteenth century to isolate and
create new colors, many of them from
mineral bases, as well as to improve
techniques for working with existing
vegetable dyes. In 1797, the French
chemist Louis Vaquelin (1763-1829)
isolated chromium, which led to the
further development of a range of
strong, bright, new colors in the first
half of the nineteenth century.

In order to be colorfast on linen or
cotton, many dyes must be used in
conjunction with a mordant, an agent
that causes the dye to form a chemi-
cal bond with the fiber. Used alone,
the dyes wash out. In the eighteenth
century it was the mordant, not the
dye, that was printed as a pattern on
the cloth. The entire length of fabric
was then immersed in the dye, and a
colorfast bond was formed where the
dye came in contact with the mor-
dant. Finally, the color was cleared, or
washed, from all non-mordanted
areas.

Many natural dyes are capable of
yielding several colors and shades
depending on the mordant with
which they are used. The madder
plant, a member of the Rubia family,
yields an enormous range of color —
black, purples, browns, and both

FIGURE 4

Block-printed fabric

Produced by the firm of

Christophe-Philippe

Oberkarnpf

Jouy, France, c. 1775

Plain-weave cotton

Height of offset repeat:

64.8 cm.

Gift of Josephine Howell

1973-51-105

Oberkarnpf used printing
blocks to imitate Indian
hand-painting, employing a
number of small blocks for
this elaborate design.

Block-printed border

Produced by the firm of

Christophe-Philippe

Oberkampf

Jouy, France, c. 1800

Plain-weave cotton

Length of repeat: 23.5 cm.

Gift of Josephine Howell

1973-51-138

bright and dull reds. The dye itself is
no different for any of these colors,
only the mordant is changed; for
instance, an iron mordant and a
madder dye will yield black, while an
alum mordant with madder will yield
red. By printing several mordants
sequentially on a cloth before
immersion dyeing, one madder bath
will produce a multicolored fabric.
Madder was such an important dye
that it was raised commercially on
farms, and specialists could
distinguish between the madder
grown in the Netherlands and that

grown in the Mediterranean area.

Dyes and mordants had been used
for many centuries on piece goods
and yarn before Europeans learned
how to control mordants sufficiently
to print with them. The problem was
essentially one of thickening the
liquid mordant so that it could be
transferred from vat to cloth by
means of a carved wooden block. The
substance had to be thick enough to
adhere to the block without running
off, but thin enough so that the edges
of the shapes could print a clear
outline without blurring. Starch or

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FIGURE 6

Block-printed fabric

Produced by the firm of

Chrisrophe-Philippe

Oberkampf

Jouy, France, c. 1795

Plain-weave cotton

Height of repeat: 39.4 cm.

Au Panier Fleuri Fund

1957-74-1

Typical of a group of fabrics
produced by several firms in
northern France at the end
of the eighteenth century,
this piece is printed with
four different motifs, widely
spaced but regularly
repeated in horizontal rows.

ss 1

flour was often used as a thickener,
but the recipes for mordants and dyes
were developed by individual printers
and varied considerably from one
firm to another.

After a fabric had been printed
and the excess color cleared, it was
often glazed, a finishing technique
that gave a lustrous and shiny surface.
The glaze usually washed off, but
occasionally an unused example from
the eighteenth century can be found
with the glaze still intact.

Textile-printing techniques fall into
four major categories: block printing,
plate printing, roller printing, and
lithography. Each of these techniques
leaves a different sort of impression
and gives the cloth a different
appearance.

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BLOCK
PRINTING

Block printing was the most
common textile-printing technique in
Europe until early in the nineteenth
century. Hand-held wooden blocks
carved with designs in relief were
used to print a repetition of a design
along a length of fabric. Since each
block could print only one mordant
or color, each color required another
block. Fabrics with many colors were
produced with a large number of
printing blocks, each containing only
that part of the overall design it was
to print.

Although block sizes varied widely,
and shapes ranged from square to
rectangular to irregular, the most
common block was a rectangle of
twenty to twenty-five centimeters by
twenty-eight to thirty centimeters.
Those blocks that printed only small
areas of accent color might have a
width of five centimeters or less.
Given the practicalities of produc-
tion, each block needed to be large
enough to contain as much of the
design as possible, yet small enough
to be easily handled by printers and
assistants.

Sometimes the wooden blocks were
modified in order to produce special
effects. Strips of metal, usually brass
or copper, were hammered into the
block to create narrow printing lines
and to outline shapes, while closely
set short lengths of wire were

embedded in the block and filed off
to the same height to produce a
dotted impression known as picotage,
or pin-work.

A technique called felting was
introduced for printing large areas of
solid color. Since wood does not hold
the liquid dyeing medium evenly,
often the wooden centers of what
were to be areas of color larger than
three-quarters of a centimeter were
carved out and filled with tightly
packed felt, which absorbs liquid and
redeposits it evenly on the cloth.
Sometimes felted areas left an impres-
sion on the back of the cloth that
indicated both the wooden outline
wall and the felted area of the block.

The precise placement of each
block within the design for the final
printed image was guided by a regis-
tration mark on the block (FIGURE 2).
A metal wire extending out from one
corner of each block printed a small
dot on the cloth. This registration
mark was aligned with the dot on the
corner of the succeeding impression.
Printers, caught between the necessity
of using registration marks and the
desire to disguise them from the
general public, often hid the dots
within the seeded center of a flower
or within a group of berries.

To print a length of cloth,
impressions of a block were repeated
regularly over the length and width of

Block-printed fabric
France, 1785-95
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 24 cm.
Museum purchase
1985-6-1

This is a very good
reproduction of a fabric
originally produced by
Oberkampf atjouy. The
flowers on thejouy fabric
are veined with lines; here
the shading is achieved
with scattered dots.

FIGURES

Block-printed fabric,

"Trafalgar Chintz"

Produced by the firm of

John Bury

Sabden, England, 1806

Plain-weave cotton

Height of repeat: 91.5 cm.

Gift of

Mrs. Roger Brunschwig

1966-32-1

This elaborate fabric was
produced to commemorate
the death of Admiral Lord
Nelson in January 1806.
Requiring many blocks to
print, it was designed so
that lengths placed side by
side would form an offset
repeat.

the entire fabric. If the block was lined
up so that the impression it left was
ditectly underneath and direcdy
beside the impression of previous
units, a straight repeat of the pattern
resulted; if, instead, the block was
pt inted partway down the side of the
previous impression, an offset pattern
resulted. The offset rhythm was
frequently used in textile printing to
disguise the joins of the printing unit.

The use of designs with strong
diagonal movement helped disguise
the printing unit, too. It is interesting
to note how often block-printed fabrics
are designed with diagonal vines or
stems, although the printing is based
on a vertical repetition of the block.
To the informed eye, the block units
are always discernible; spotting the
registration marks is often the first
step to determining the printing unit.

Block ptinters generally worked in
teams during the eighteenth century,
each printer with his own assistant,
usually a young boy whose job it
was to prepare the blocks between
impressions. These assistants carefully
dipped blocks into tubs of color,
making certain that the colorant re-
mained on top of the printing surface
and did not run into the carved
crevices. The printer in turn carefully
aligned the block with the previous
impression and hammered on its back
with a mallet to drive the impression

FIGURE 9

Block-printed fabric

England, c. 1805

Plain-weave cotton

Height of offset repeat:

28 cm.

Gift of Harvey Smith

1959-91-2

This amusing fabric was
created during a brief
Egyptian revival period at
the turn of the eighteenth
century.

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Block-printed fabric

Produced by Bannister Hall

printworks

Lancashire, England, 1815

Plain-weave cotton

Height of offset repeat:

41.25 cm.

Gift of Clifton S. Billings

1971-79-2

home. Since each block could only
print one mordant or color, each color
required another block. A length of
cloth was completely printed in one
color before the printers started with
the second color. The more colors a
block-printed fabric displayed, the
more highly it was prized both
aesthetically and commercially.

Because printers purchased both
domestic and imported cloths from
different sources, the widths of
unprinted material varied from lot to
lot, causing designs planned for one
width of cloth not to fit within the
selvedges of another. In the best of
the block-printed fabrics the edge-to-
edge repeat was planned, and the
purchaser was expected to sew lengths
together as either an offset or a
straight repeat, following the visual
flow of the design. Blocks were often
cut so that an image that was split
on the block would be complete
when lengths were seamed together
(FIGURE 8).

Block printing developed through-
out Europe and even reached Amer-
ica, although until the nineteenth
century American production was
limited and of uneven quality. In each
area where the industry took root, a
characteristic style developed as well.
For example, many English eigh-
teenth-century block-printed fabrics
have a spray of flowers entering the

fabric horizontally from one edge, a
design device that can be traced to
the English silks woven at Spitalfields
in the first half of the eighteenth cen-
tury.

Several printing centers in France —
at Jouy, in Alsace, and in Provence —
produced a design that massed small
flowers known as "mignonettes" or
"bonnes herbes" on a dark ground.
French textile printers frequently
made an effort to have their fabrics
look "Indian" (FIGURE 4) and incor-
porated strong and exotic plant
forms in vivid coloring far more
frequently than the English.

Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf
(1738-1815) was the best known of
the French printers. Although the
term toile dejouy is often thought to
refer only to monochrome, copper-
plate-printed fabrics patterned with
isolated motirs or scenes, Oberkampt
began printing with blocks in 1759
when he opened his firm in Jouy. In
business until 1842, his firm used the
techniques of block printing, plate
printing, and roller printing.

COPPER-
PLATE
PRINTING

1 he use of engraved sheets of metal
for printing ink on paper, and occa-
sionally on woven fabrics, developed
in Europe as early as the fifteenth
century. Not until the early 1750s in
Ireland were engraved sheets or plates
used to print continuous lengths of
fabric with a mordant, followed with
immersion dyeing of the mordanted
textile.

Copperplate printing requires a
colorant of a different consistency
from that of block printing because
the viscosity demanded by an intaglio
or engraved surface is quite different
from that of a relief or raised surface.
Copperplate printing presses con-
sisted of a flat-bed frame on which
the plate, with a mordant in its
incised lines, was placed face up. The
fabric to be printed was laid on top
and pressed so closely to the plate, by
means of a winch and mangle, that
the fabric absorbed the liquid
mordant resting in the incised lines of
the plate. When a continuous length
of cloth was being printed, the plate
was recolored and the cloth
repositioned after each impression.

The height of the repeat in
copperplate printing was generally
from eighty-four to one hundred and
four centimeters. If two different
plates were printed sequentially, as
was done by an English printer
named Robert Jones, followed by a

group ot Alsatian printers, the height
of the repeat could reach up to two
meters. Perhaps the size of the repeat
inspired the frequent choice of
architectural elements in the design.
Obviously, their height limited the
uses of the fabric; large-scale patterns
could only be used for interior
decorations.

The fineness of the engraved line
used in copperplate printing meant
that the images designed for textile
printing could be more detailed and
realistic. Flower petals could be
rendered with depth and clarity, and
human figures depicted with the
modeling that suggests teal flesh.
Unfortunately, as successive impres-
sions were taken from the same plate,
the metal wore away, and the sharp-
edged line of the printing plate was
gradually lost. A blurted, smudgy look
indicates a late impression.

Francis Nixon, working in the
Dublin suburb of Drumcondra
between 1751 and 1755, produced a
design of surprising sophistication for
what is presumed to be the first
copperplate-printed cotton textile
with a repeating design (FIGURE II).
The design of Nixon's Drumcondra
fabric repeats vertically with no
quickly discernible plate break line,
the plate having been engraved so
that elements at the top and bottom
overlapped during the printing

UK*.

9 $&~w

Plate-printed fabric

(photographic

reconstrucrion of

lengths in repeat, below)

Produced by Francis Nixon

Drumcondra, Ireland,

1752-55

Plain-weave with linen warp,

cotton weft

Height of repeat: 99 cm.

Gift of

Elizabeth M. Holohan

1974-31-1

33E f (!;,#* 53?

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process. Furthermore, the design — a
tree and architectural elements with a
subsidiary motif of a rustic cottage —
was not centered on the plate but
arranged with parts of the pattern
coming in from each edge. If lengths
of the printed fabric were sewn
together, the design would form an
offset repeat.

Copperplate-printed textiles
quickly became fashionable in
Britain, and by the 1760s several
firms were engaged in their
production. Nixon left Ireland
between 1755 and 1757 and became
a partner in an English firm located
on the River Merton. In addition,
John and Mary Ware at Crayford,
Robert Jones at Old Ford, the Ollive,
Talwin and Foster families at Bromley
Hall, and several other firms were
involved in copperplate printing.
Some of these firms produced designs
that have a distinctive "look." For
example, the Wares produced a rare
category of fabrics printed by two
plates, the second plate printed on
top of the impression of the first.

The attention English manufac-
turers paid to the design of edge-to-
edge repeats varied widely. The Nixon
and the Jones firms, for example,
produced lengths of fabrics that were
clearly intended to be sewn together
as offset repeats when assembled as
curtains or hangings. Usually part of

a motif was printed on each edge of
the fabric. On the other hand, designs
produced by the Ollive, Talwin, and
Foster families at the Bromley Hall
printworks recurved towards the center
or tapered to a complete stop rather
than reaching across the edge of the
fabric (FIGURE 12).

After 1774, British law required
printers to use all-cotton fabrics of
British manufacture and stipulated
that these fabrics be woven with blue
warps at the edges. Today these warps
help identify a printed fabric as
British and pinpoint its production
between 1774 and 1811. Many of
these blue-warp, copperplate-printed
fabrics have a width of about sixty-
eight centimeters, as opposed to a
width of around one hundred and
four centimeters for fabrics printed
before 1774. Despite this change,
printers often appear to have
continued to use plates originally
designed for larger cloth. The result,
of course, was that pre-1774 designs
printed on later, blue-warped fabric
were lopped off, sometimes in mid-
image, losing from twenty-five to
thirty-eight centimeters of the design
(FIGURE 13).

England was also responsible for a
small but puzzling group of white on
blue prints, the designs of which
correspond to recorded examples
from the Bromley Hall printworks

FIGURE 12

Plate-printed fabtic
Produced by the firm of
Bromley Hall

Middlesex, England; design
c. 1760, printing after 1774
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 87.60 cm.
Au Panier Fleuri Fund
1960-5-1

The fabric on which this
late imptession was printed
is narrower than the design
itself and the printing plate.
Blue warps at each edge
indicate that the fabric was
woven in England sometime
after 1774.

FIGURE IS

Plare-printed fabric

England, c. 1770

Plain-weave with linen warp,

cotton weft

Height of repeat: 95.25 cm.

Museum purchase

1984-123-1

The motifs here have been
cut off abruptly at the
edges, for the fabric is too
narrow for the printing
plate.

■

FIGURE h

Indigo-dyed fabric,

place-printed with

discharging or bleaching

agent

Produced by the firm of

Bromley Hall

Middlesex, England, 1790s

Plain-weave cotton

58.5 x91.5 cm.

Gift of Harold M. Bailey

1960-79-20

Plate-printed fabric

Huet (1745-1811), after

Jean Baptiste Oudry

(1686-1755)

Produced by rhe firm of

Christophe-Philippe

Oberkampf

Jouy, France, 1806

Plain-weave cotton

Height of repeat: 96.5 cm.

Museum purchase

1980-33-9

This textile is representative
of the best copperplate work
prinred by Oberkampf.
Consistently the firm
designed its plates at least
an inch narrower than the
fabtics to allow for a seam
when lengths were sewn
together. The design then
formed an offset repeat.

FIGURE lb

Plate-printed fabric,
"Cairo Fair" (detail
opposite)

Produced by the firm of
Petitpierre & Cie
Nantes, France, c. 1800
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 99 cm.
Gift of W. &J. Sloane
1943-43-27

The white band running
horizontally through the
center of the detail shows a
misregistration of the plate.
The manufacturer rried
to disguise the plate line
by having parts of the
design — a branch and small
leaves — extend above and
below the plate break line.

(FIGURE 14). Their production reversed
the usual process by first dyeing the
cloth a solid indigo and then creating
the design by plate-printing a
bleaching or color discharging agent.

French production of copperplate-
printed fabrics began in the 1770s in
response to England's successes. The
French quickly excelled at the tech-
nique, and by the 1790s their designs
surpassed those of the English.

Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf's
firm at Jouy began to produce
copperplate as well as block-printed
textiles. The first copperplates
employed at Jouy were designed to
print all the way to the edge of the
fabric. If lengths were sewn up, part
of the design was lost in the seam.
Within a few years, the printers
began to leave almost an inch of
unprinted white space at each edge.
This unprinted white border became
a convention of French copperplate-
printed textiles. Many of the later
monochrome plate-printed fabrics
were designed by Jean-Baptiste Huet
(1745-1811), a Parisian painter whom
Oberkampf had secured as a textile
designer (FIGURE 15). Huet's chief skill
lay in designing scenes with animals
and people.

The city of Nantes, a seaport in
northwestern France, was one of the
most important textile-printing
centers in Europe. Several major firms
in the city produced copperplate-

printed fabrics, among them Favre
Petitpierre & Cie (FIGURE 16). Gorgerat,
and Dubern & Cie. To some extent,
Nantes' thriving textile business can
be explained by the city's extensive
overseas trade. The city's textile
printers could readily import raw
goods and supplies, and just as easily
export printed cloth. Printed textiles
of all sorts formed one of the city's
most important export commodities.

In some instances it is difficult to
determine which firm produced a
particular plate-printed textile. The
designs of at least one Nantes firm,
Favre Petitpierre & Cie, are
sometimes found with the name of
another firm, such as La Fosse Lionell
of Montpelier, printed on the cloth.
Either Favre Pepitpierre printed on
contract for other firms, or they sold
their plates to competitors in other
parts of France after they had
finished with them.

This latter hypothesis is further
supported by the existence of five
engraved copper printing plates in
the Musee Lambinet in Versailles,
which essentially match designs
known to have been produced by the
Favre Petitpierre firm. In each case,
however, some additions have been
engraved onto the plate — more
foliage, a flock of small birds, a
striped background. These alterations
were probably made after the plates
left the Favre Petitpierre ownership.

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Engraved plate- and
block-printed fabric,
"Monuments ot Rome"
Produced by the firm of
Oberkampf and Widmer
after designs by Bartolomeo
Pinelli (1781-1835)
Jouy, France, c. 1821
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 52 cm.
Museum purchase
1978-140-4

During the nineteenth
century the height ot
ptinting plates decreased
somewhat, as this
relatively small repeat
illustrates.

ROLLER
PRINTING

.engraved plates and carved wooden
blocks continued to be used for textile
printing until well into the nineteenth
century, but their importance steadily
lessened with the move to engraved
rollers or cylinders that began in the
second half of the eighteenth century.
The process, which Thomas Bell
patented in 1783, was first success-
fully practiced in England.

The immediate advantages of roller
printing in terms of rapid commercial
production were remarkable, allowing
for the mass production of printed
textiles at a much lower cost to the
consumer. The technique of roller
printing involves a continuously rotat-
ing cylinder, which, on each revolu-
tion, comes in contact with both the
color trough, for a fresh coloring, and
the fabric. The fabric is thereby
printed continuously from the start of
the bolt to the end, as opposed to the
block or plate system of repositioning
and recoloring the printing element,
as well as repositioning the fabric,
between each impression. The design
is positioned on the cylinder so that
the top and the bottom of the motifs
connect exactly. Unlike both plate-
and block-printed fabrics, roller-
printed fabrics show no sign of a
mechanical repeat. The height of the
repeat on early roller prints is short,
for the repeat height corresponds to
the circumference of the printing

roller, and at first only rollers of nar-
row diameter were used. There was
no repeat in the width of early mono-
chrome roller prints.

Because the first roller-printing
machines could produce only mono-
chrome fabrics, English printers used
them to print textiles that looked a lot
like copperplate -printed textiles. The
principal difference lay in the greater
height of the repeat possible with
copperplate-printed fabric.

Printing large areas of solid color
presented a particular challenge
in roller printing, one solved by
engraving a series of closely spaced
diagonal lines that, when printed,
gave the effect of a solid block of
color. These areas of color were often
used as the background for the
design. At other times a network of
finely drawn, lace-like curves filled
the background area.

Machines were soon made that
could print several colors at the same
time. The fabric passed through the
machine once, coming in contact with
a different cylinder for each color.
The principal challenge in roller
printing more than one color lay
in keeping colors from running
into each other. It was found that
combining engraved cylinders with
wooden rollers having a relief surface
of wood, metal, and felt worked very
well (SEE COVER). In England this

FIGURE 18

Roller-printed fabric
Produced by the firm of
Hausmann

Logelback, Alsace, c. 1840
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 43.2 cm.
Gift of W. &J. Sloane
1943-43-28

Although the roller used to
print this piece was wider
than the textile, it is
apparent from the design
that the fabric was intended
to be sewn together as an
offset repeat.

g&W-i

?M fe#^

practice was called union, or mule,
printing. If one examines such a
textile, it is difficult to tell if the fabric
was printed by a union press or
printed first by engraved cylinders
with further colors added by hand-
held wood blocks.

The selvedge-to-selvedge width of
English roller-printed fabric from
the early nineteenth century was
only about sixty-three centimeters.
Apparently many rollers had been
made to print a wider fabric, for the
design was cut off in mid-motif in
such a manner that it could not
match up with any part of the design
on the other edge. The patterns on
curtains, large hangings, and bed-
coverings, for instance, would have been
continually interrupted. Nevertheless,
printed fabrics, which were now
available in greater quantity and at a
lower cost, appealed to the mass market.

By the 1830s, roller-printed fabric

FIGURE 19

Roller-printed fabric
England, 1835-45
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 38.7 cm.
Museum purchase
1977-65-1

Shaded stripes of color were
one of the innovations that
roller printing produced.

was being produced in quantity in
England and on the Continent. The
cost per yard dropped to a point that
was much lower than fifty years
earlier when printing was done with
blocks or plates, and a greater range
of color was available because of
improvements in new dyes, including
a brilliant chrome yellow and a bright
green. Green had always been a diffi-
cult color to achieve in the eighteenth
century, since it necessitated printing
yellow over blue.

Printers also began to use fabrics
other than those made entirely of
cotton. Wool took dye beautifully and
served as a foundation for some
highly colorful and exotic designs.
Fabrics with a mixed fiber content
such as those with a silk warp and a
wool weft were also introduced, while
cottons intended for more exclusive
markets were woven with a design or
texture in the fabric.

OTHER
DEVELOPMENTS

Lithography was developed as a
printing technique in Germany in the
last decade of the eighteenth century.
Useful primarily for printing on
paper, its application to textile
printing was limited. Lithography was
not employed for lengths of cloth with
repeating patterns, but instead for
specially sized pieces such as
handkerchiefs, sashes, men's
waistcoats, and other specialized
items that were not designed with a
repeating pattern. The technique was
effective on both cotton and silk
foundation fabrics.

Lithography is often difficult to
identify because the fibers of the
foundation cloth have absorbed
enough of the printing pigment so
that the technique may be confused
with stipple engraving or even
etching, both of which were also
occasionally used for textile printing.
Only the word litho next to the
printer's name identifies the tech-
nique with certainty.

In the first half of the nineteenth
century, European printers used
blocks, plates, rollers, and lithography
to create the designs for their fabrics.
Technological improvements came
quickly. Roller-printing machines
were developed that could print
increasing numbers of colors,
permitting the speedy production
of very colorful textiles.

Great advances were also made
during this period in a technique
called discharge printing. By 1815 a
substance had been developed that
could remove color from dyed cloth
and at the same time deposit a
metallic oxide that served as a
mordant for yet another color. It thus
became possible to print a yellow
design on a red background with no
intervening space between the two
colors.

Another development combined a
resist with a mordant, creating a type
of fabric known as lapis, after the
gemstone lapis lazuli, in which flecks
of many colors can be seen. Lapis
fabrics are characterized by a number
of different colors in small areas,
usually including red, yellow, black,
blue, and green. Lapis involved
printing a substance that was at once
both a mordant for the red dye and a
resist for the blue. Thus when a lapis
fabric was immersion dyed in
madder, then immersion dyed in
indigo, the blue and the red color
appeared only in the preselected
areas. Lapis was a technique that
began in England and was further
developed in Alsace.

The development of the printed
textile industry between 1760 and the
mid-nineteenth century was extraordi-
narily rapid. In England, with no
more than forty thousand persons

Roller-printed fabric
England, c. 1835
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 34.9 cm.
Au Panier Fleuri Fund
1986-74-1

This elaborate fabric was
printed with both relief and
engraved rollers, seven in
all. The landscape on the
urn illustrates the
sophisticated control of
shading that good roller
printing could achieve.

employed in 1760, the industry grew
to support a million and a half work-
ers by 1835. Printed fabrics quickly
lost their status as luxury goods for
the wealthy and became everyday
purchases for the middle and lower
classes. Edward Baines, writing in
1835, described the situation in
England: "...the humblest classes
have now the means of as great neat-
ness, and even gaiety of dress, as the
middle and upper classes of the last
age. A country-wake in the nineteenth
century may display as much finery
as a drawing room of the eighteenth;
and the peasant's cottage... have as
handsome furnitures [fabrics] for
beds, windows and tables as those of
a house of a substantial tradesman
sixty years since."

This extraordinary turn of events

Roller-printed fabric
England, 1825-35
Plain-weave cotton
Height of repeat: 34.3 cm.
Gift of Mrs. Ralph P. Hanes
1987-167-3

This textile was printed by a
machine called a mule, or
union machine, which
worked with borh engraved
and relief rollers.

'-&& ; -CSC)

was the outgrowth of a variety of
factors, including the increasing avail-
ability of cotton, particularly from the
American South, chemical discov-
eries, mechanical improvements in
spinning, weaving, and printing, the
caprices of fashion, and the politics
of international trade. All over Europe
the situation was much the same.
Once the technology and resources
for mass production became avail-
able, printed fabrics lost some of their
novelty and their prestige. Not until
the second half of the nineteenth
century, with such developments as
the manufacture of aniline dyes, the
revival of block printing, and the
discovery of screen printing, did
printed cottons regain a degree of
their former status.

Gillian Moss
Assistant Curator

Plate-printed

handerkerchiefs

England, c. 1845

76.2 x82.5 cm.

Gift of

Mrs. William A. Hutcheson

1943-31-8

The plate with which this
fabric was printed contained
the design for four small
handerchiefs. The purchaser
was expected to cut the
handkerchiefs apart and
hem them individually.

SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baines, Edward, Jr. History of the Cotton
Manufacture in Great Britain. London:
Fisher & Jackson, 1835.

Bredif, Josette. Les plus belles pieces des
collections. Jouy-en-Josas, France:
Musee Oberkampf, 1979.

La toile imprimee.

Jouy-enjosas, France: Musee
Oberkampf, 1981.

Berrhollet, Claude Louis, and A.B.
Bertholler. Elements of the Art of Dyeing.
Translated by Andrew Ure. 2 vols.
London: Thomas Tegg, 1824.

Chapman, Stanley D., and Serge
Chassagne. European Textile Printers in the
Eighteenth Century; A Study of Peel and
Oberkampf. London: Heinemann, 1981.

Chassagne, Serge. La manufacture de toiles
imprimees de Tournemine-les-Angers . Paris:
Klincksieck [1971].

Clouzot, Henri. Histoire de la manufacture
dejouy et de la toile imprimee en France.
Paris: G. Van Oest, 1926.

Clouzot, Henri, and Frances Morris.
Painted and Printed Fabrics: The History of
the Manufactory atjouy and Other Ateliers
in France. 1760-1815. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1927.

Depitre, Edgard. La toile peinte en France
au XVIIe et au XVHIe siecles; Industrie,
commerce, prohibitions. Paris:
Riviere et Cie, 1912.

Dollfus-Aussert, Daniel. Mate'riaux pour la
coloration des etoffes. 2 vols. Paris:
F. Savy, 1865.

Drossen, Monique. "Les inscriptions des
toiles imprimees: reperes de datation de
l'attribution?" Bulletin de liaison du centre
international d'e'tude des textiles anciens
Gi-GA (1986).

Floud, Peter C. English Printed Textiles,
1720-1836. London: Victoria and Albert
Museum, I960.

"The Origins of English

Calico Printing." Journal of the Society of
Dyers and Colourists 76 (May I960).

"The English Contribution to

the Development of Copper-Plate
Printing." Journal of the Society of Dyers and
Colourists 76 (July I960).

"The English Contribution to

the Early History of Indigo Printing."
Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists
76 (June I960).

Montgomery, Florence M. Printed Textiles:
English and American Cottons and Linens,
1700-1850. New York: Viking, 1970.

Persoz, J. Traite the'orique et pratique de
limpression des tissus. 5 vols. Paris:
Victor Masson, 1846.

Roy, Bernard. Une capitate d'indiennage.
Nantes: Musee aux Salorges, 1948.

Storey, Joyce. The Thames and Hudson
Manual of Dyes and Fabrics. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1978.

The Thames and Hudson

Manual of Textile Printing. New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1974.

Toiles de Nantes des XVIIle et XIX siecles.
Mulhouse, France: Musee de
l'impression sur etoffes, 1977.

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